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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27229471">as above, so below</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysterymistakes/pseuds/mysterymistakes'>mysterymistakes</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hades (Video Game 2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Discussion of Death, M/M, Pining, Pre-Canon, Than's POV</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 21:22:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,473</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27229471</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysterymistakes/pseuds/mysterymistakes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Death deals itself as kindly as it can.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Thanatos/Zagreus (Hades Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>194</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>as above, so below</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>hi! this is my personal take on what might have happened precanon that causes than to throw himself into his work and kinda dodge zag at minimum until he gets to elysium.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Bloody screams rip through the shimmering evening haze. Sweat and metal fill the air with the awful, acrid sting of battle. Above it all, Ares gloats, drenched in the living red of his offerings. Blood spills from the edges of his armor, slicks the blade of his sword and casts him as what he really is: an emblem of death, harbinger of violence and lord of strife. He descends into the fray, hungry for conflict and for mortal flesh. </p>
<p>Death floats above, scythe at rest against his back. His head echoes with the piercing snap of severing threads, hundreds at a time, as the corpses pile and fate comes to pass. Down, down they will be taken; they will await their judgement for a short eternity and to live it out even longer. Thanatos sometimes, and with great caution, wonders at the Fates’ design. He counts himself lucky he does not bear the burden of Nyx, who must live with how she bore them, but he still wonders if all this- the blood, the strife, the anger and misery- is truly necessary. </p>
<p>The threads of war sound so different from the threads of old age, of sickness, or of any other final hands mortals are dealt. It is his responsibility to deal death, but he does not do it in the fashion of Ares or of the mortals themselves: Thanatos removes life. It is his duty to free the soul from the body, to ready it for Hermes to take to Charon, slicing through the final and fraying ties of the mortal to this realm. He’s always thought of himself an equalizer, merciful in his work. He treasures the relief on the faces of those whose time has come, the warmth with which they regard his cold, gray figure--for they know he comes bearing a release, an opportunity, the keys to the next kingdom. He deals his death delicately and with tact, with a sweeping arc and a waiting hand. Easy, painless.</p>
<p>The deaths of war are far from it.</p>
<p>Threads snap with all the violence of a lifetime condensed into a single moment, bloodied and frayed and screaming like hell. The noise of it is merciless. Thanatos aches for these souls, these not-yet shades who will no doubt take up even more space in the flooded, overcrowded plains of Asphodel, buried under lava and jostling for space that does not exist, ghastly, translucent hands reaching up, up, up. It’s horrible. It’s disgusting. </p>
<p>There is a part of Thanatos that wants to run. </p>
<p>There is a part of him that wants to run and shift and hide far, far away, bury himself so deeply in Hypnos’s quilt that he cannot see how it is the color of blood, the red of the Styx. He wants to run home, home to his brothers and Cerberus and Mother Nyx and Zagreus. Zagreus, who will spew emphatically about his latest squabble with Meg, or whine about whatever tedious paperwork he’s been assigned by his father, or speculate about the cryptic tidbit Achilles dropped in his lap today. He wants to leave these mortals and their petty wars, fought in the names of gods who care mostly for themselves, behind. </p>
<p>But he cannot, for he is Death, and Death comes for everybody. So, Thanatos waits. He waits, above the fury, as Ares deals his inelegant death and as much of it as possible, waits as Demeter’s cold and perfect white is spoiled by corpses that spread across it like sores. He waits until there is a victory cry, somewhere among the forest of freshly-rent and youthful red that grows before his eyes, each string held by a single, aching, painful thread that screams with the need to become whole again. It makes him sick. The sound of his gauntlets wrapping around his scythe seems a world away. Finally, <em>finally,</em> Ares appears back at Thanatos’s side, battle-drunk with a satisfaction that neither ambrosia nor nectar could ever hope to recreate. </p>
<p>The scythe moves in a great, sweeping arc, severing the souls from their realm -and there’s just so <em>many</em> all at once that it makes him nauseous in a way he hasn’t been for eons- and the battle is over. The war has been won. Thanatos does not care who the victor is, he never will, but he’s certain he will find out, noisy as the shades of Elysium are. </p>
<p>Death deals itself as kindly as it can. The souls appear as little one-eyed parcels, born anew and blinking slowly, owlishly, helpless as they wait to be swept off by Hermes’s warm and golden light. War returns sluggish and sated to the mountaintop from whence it came, and Death disappears back beneath the earth. </p>
<p>“What do you mean, Zagreus is gone?”</p>
<p>Hypnos regards him coolly and with forced passivity. Their lord watches them from a short distance away. </p>
<p>“Well, I don’t know, really,” Hypnos says in that condescending, faux-mirthful way of his. “He seemed awfully mad, more so than usual! Even Meg was surprised. Lord Hades sent her off to Tartarus! Could you imagine? The last time he did that was-” He clams up with such ferocity (insofar as Hypnos can be <em>ferocious</em>) that he bites his tongue, and a tiny drop of blue blood escapes the side of his mouth. Thanatos does not need to turn around to know that it is Nyx standing at the corner, and he can well imagine the face she wears. </p>
<p>It is little known that Death grows tired. He does, and he does now, too- he can feel it in the dryness of his eyes and the ache of his muscles, and it is seen in how he floats just barely high enough for the tips of his toes to evade brushing the stone floor. Death has had enough for one day (<em>or night, or whatever time it is</em>, grouses an unwelcome voice in the back of his mind), but he feels the pull of his call, out there in the unknown. He feels the pull, but it’s misplaced- it’s not a world away, separated by prisons and plains and fields and a bloody river. There is death in Tartarus. Shades are meeting their ends yet again--but that doesn’t make sense, as the only ones who can deal death like this are a precious few in Elysium, and the Chthonic- </p>
<p>“Oh,” says Thanatos. Sleep regards Death as though he were an idiot. </p>
<p>Thanatos quickly finds that he does not like the sound of once-dead threads snapping again. He shifts to the ever-moving chambers of Tartarus, sees the corpses (he isn’t sure what to call them) of the shades in great, heaping piles- Thanatos knows that the wretches locked in these damp, dismal rooms to rot for eternity deserve to be here, but- they’ve already died once. He breaks their threads with care. It’s surprisingly hard. Their strings have an odd elasticity to them, and the wretches, the louts and the numbskulls and so on, reappear as if nothing had happened at all. He continues on, and wonders if the damned still know who they once were. </p>
<p>Thanatos finds Zagreus at one of Charon’s shops. He conceals himself, stays at the very fringes of Zag’s consciousness to assess matters for himself, and although he cannot escape Charon’s ever-discerning eye, he is grateful to his youngest brother for his silence. Precious obol changes hands, and Zag is enveloped in an uncanny reddish glow, different from the murky reflection of the Styx, and Thanatos does not realize what it is until Zagreus moves into the next chamber, his blade swinging with sickening familiarity. Wretches fall to Stygius, guided by War, and Thanatos is horrified. It hits him all at once. He is forced to shift away, abscond to somewhere safe, somewhere that has not yet been reached. It is in the fountain chamber of Elysium, bluish-green and sun-dappled and disgustingly idyllic, that he allows himself to have the thought. </p>
<p>Zagreus has finally made good on his word. He is trying to escape the underworld and he -no, Nyx, it had to have been to be Nyx, she’s the only one with contacts like this- has enlisted the aid of his family, his birthright, up high and worlds away. Thanatos despairs, for he knows that Zagreus will succeed. He knows this not because he has seen the prophecies, nor because he has been told the future, but because he knows <em>Zagreus.</em> Zagreus, who is driven, unendingly stubborn and born of the Styx, unable to die. He knows that Zagreus will do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, no matter the consequence. Thanatos rests his pounding head against the perfectly-temperate walls of Elysium.</p>
<p>In the back of his mind, Than listens to the snap of a string he’s never heard before. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>many thanks to nat (<a href="https://twitter.com/nishtabel">twitter</a>, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/nishtabel">ao3</a>) for giving this a quick read and to bun (<a href="https://twitter.com/softmatchabun">twitter</a>, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/ichigobun">ao3</a>) for pulling my head out of the sand like six times a week</p>
<p>i can be found on <a href="https://twitter.com/mysterymistakes">twitter</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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